Take no heavier lift of your children, than your Lord alloweth; give them room beside your heart, but not in the yolk of your heart, where Christ should be; for then they are your idols, not your bairns. If your Lord take any of them home to his House before the storm come on, take it well, the Owner of the orchard may take down two or three apples off His own trees, before midsummer, and ere they get the harvest sun; and it would not be seemly that His servant, the gardener, should chide Him for it. Let our Lord pluck His own fruit at any season He pleaseth; they are not lost to you, they are laid up so well, as that they are coffered in heaven, where our Lord’s best jewels lie.

From the letters of Samuel Rutherford, 1600 – 1661